The only reason I still think they will inevitably fail (although not without a heavy cost to the public) is because of how many different factions there are. Currently they are united by a common hate of liberalism, but if they manage to defeat it they will inevitably turn on each other.

No matter how I slice this I strongly feel that all roads leads to a civil war and a fracturing of the federation.

To know that you’d need to be paying attention. Most people are not paying attention, they only remember they had more money back then.

Listen you can either accept that the vast majority of people are simpletons and try to make this out to be more complicated than it is, or you can understand why Trump won and use that to win next elections. Trump won because he understands that they are simpletons and engages them as such.

Yes, but it’s different. Do you really not understand how simple the calculus is for people who are not politically and or philosophically engaged?

They only have 2 real options, it’s either more of the same or the guy who’s promising to tear down the system. There’s really no nine dimensional chess, it’s pretty clear cut to me.

To think otherwise is, once more, a failure to learn the lesson.

Tips if you will. Which will not pay taxes soon.

Isn’t that how fascism always works though? It’s a populist movement.

Sooooo… what will they do with the $200 million dollars?

Interesting read, thanks for taking the time to make the research.

I don’t want to get behind this type of thinking. I get it, I really do. I would also like to shake sense into people. But as you’ve seen that doesn’t work.

I believe that all people should question authority and they should inform themselves using the proper sources without taking what anyone says at face value. Authorities will more often than not simplify and remove all nuance when communicating information to the masses and this is the root of the increased mistrust in vaccines with Covid came from. Authorities stated as facts things that they did not know were facts and overstated the effectiveness of the vaccines and then tried to silence the fact that in a small number of people the vaccine did cause cardiovascular issues. The government should have been upfront about that and explained why the trade off was worth it, but they didn’t because they erred on the side of thinking that people are complete morons. They may be, but we need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

IMO, and this is maybe off topic but official authorities should have open and long panels in podcast format discussing why they take the decisions they take and explaining the people the benefits and risks, inviting dissenters and proponents so that people can make the most informed decision. Not for every decision of course, but at least for those health related decisions that affect everyone we should.

I know many or even most will not do the right thing and inform themselves properly. But I also cannot stop believing that people are capable of finding good information and making the best decisions with the evidence available if we make that information easily accessible with all possible considerations. Because if I believe that people cannot make good decisions, then I necessarily also have to believe that we should limit the participation in our democratic society to only those who demonstrate this aptitude and I really really don’t want to believe that.

Did you read what I wrote? I said I hope, which means yes I am basing myself off of vague feelings because I can’t read the man’s mind nor Trump’s. But I can’t just dismiss RFK because he has a few bad takes, since I tend to agree with most of what he says outside of the vaccine stuff. Or do you disagree that Americans are over reliant on medications, that drugs shouldn’t be advertised, and that our food supply is horrible and toxic for the most part? Because these are not opinions, these are facts. For evidence look to countries that actually care about the well being of their citizens and you’ll find that their regulations are on the side of RFK.

My expectation is that he won’t be allowed to do anything and will be fired 6 months into the job because he really wants to shake things up and that threatens the profit of a lot of corporations.

My hope is that he will at least be able to remove drug advertising from TV, that nutrition labels will adopt a standardized serving size and that he limits the use high fructose corn syrup, additives and dyes in our food supply. If he fucks with vaccines well it’s only 4 years, we can fix it then. But I am almost certain he won’t ban vaccines and Trump wouldn’t allow it anyways, so the worse he can do is dissuade about their use. People can make decisions by themselves at that point, or so I have to think.

I mean I would still think it’s a non trivial amount of revenue for companies. Haven’t really looked that deeply into it.

Im conflicted on RFK. He’s right on his takes about nutrition and over reliance of Americans on prescription drugs, and he may be right about flouride (which we have always known had risks). He also wants to ban drug advertising which is 100% necessary. Yet his takes on vaccines are so so bad that it counters all the good he could do if he was really able to clean the food toxic food environment of the US and curb the power of big pharma.

I’m gonna hope for the best here. Vaccines are big business, so Trump might not let him make too many changes there. But so is food so who knows?

Man they really botched his last update.

I still cannot abolish personal responsibility. But I agree with you, that that is also a big part of the issue but for me a skeptical eye comes from being well educated on at least basic stuff. When you don’t know much about anything it’s really hard to decide what is fact or fiction and because trying to untangle the lies from the truth is hard work most people just default to taking everything at face value and accepting it without much skepticism.

You can’t simply absolve personal responsibility in a free society. We have so much knowledge at our disposal, people decide not to engage with it and live their version of reality because anything else is threading on their freedoms. Many in our society choose to be the way they are, or at least choose not to give a chance to be different.

I refuse to absolve people of their personal responsibility because the moment I do that I am asserting that people do not have free will and if I do that then I have to believe in authoritarianism because it would mean that people do not posses the ability to make choices by themselves and so they need someone wiser to take them in their stead.

There’s actually not that much disagreement. There’s disagreement about whether certain foods cause or increase the likelihood of diseases, like red meat and cancer. But it is almost universally accepted that a varied diet made up of Whole Foods like vegetables, grains, meat and fish and as little ultra processed foods as possible, is the best diet. Only social media influencers trying to get engagement are the ones saying that vegan,vegetarian or carnivore diet (or other more farfetched diets) are the “optimal diet”. That being said there’s some nuance to the ultraprocessed food label, because some of them could be good or at least better than most others of their kind, but as a rule of thumb if it doesn’t look like something that can grow out of the earth or came from an animal you can bet that it is ultra processed and is best avoided and eaten only on occasion.

It doesn’t take that much time either imo, just last Sunday I meal prepped for the entire week and it took me 3 hours. I know maybe not everyone can have the time for it but I’m confident in stating that most people can find 3 hours to meal prep, but they choose not to because they don’t know how to and the alternative is easier than trying to figure it out.

Education is the solution, school should be teaching people nutrition and food preparation because parents that don’t have these skills can’t teach them. It’s unbelievable that we will teach people calculus at school which they are unlikely to ever need in their lives unless they go into a technical field, but we won’t teach them the basic skills that keep us alive and healthy as a society.

I agree with him to an extent. But people can’t make right choices if they don’t know what are the right choices. As with most American ills, it’s an education problem, which is systemic and not individual. So I’d lower his number to 50% now that we all have access to the internet and can research what a good diet looks like.